The Man Who Understood Cats

by Michael Allen Dymmoch

  Suddenly the rats scurried for cover. Thinnes could smell their fear—or maybe his own. He squinted, trying to pierce the darkness beyond the circle of light. Two large yellow eyes peered back. Darkness seemed to condense around the eyes, like an image developing on Polaroid, and a huge cat stepped majestically out of the shadows. It was black, and the eerie light gleamed off every hair and whisker. Powerful muscles bulged and rippled beneath its glossy coat, and its tail whipped back and forth spasmodically. Thinnes felt both terror and fascination. The hand holding his gun hung uselessly at his side.

  The cat stopped in front of him and slapped him with a velvet paw, with claws retracted. It stood on hind legs and boxed his head with powerful blows. It began to toss him like a catnip mouse, throwing him skyward like a toy and joyfully shaking him when he fell to earth. The cat started screaming…

  “John, wake up!”

  Thinnes’s eyes stretched wide. Even in the near-dark, he could see fear in Rhonda’s face where formerly he would have seen concern.

  Twenty-Seven

  The assignment officer stopped in front of Thinnes, and Thinnes stopped typing. “We’re getting a felony review on the Williams case,” Thinnes told him. “And Ray’s talking to the state’s attorney about a search warrant for that traffic shooting last week. And we got a warrant issued for the Belmont rapist.”

  “An arrest is imminent?”

  “As we speak.”

  “Good. You got time for a coupla follow-up interviews this morning?”

  “Yeah, I guess.”

  Thinnes’s phone started ringing just as Crowne walked up and dropped a pile of folders on the table. Crowne picked up the phone, listened, and said, “Thinnes, you got a visitor. Your wannabe cop’s downstairs.”

  “Who?”

  “Dr. Caleb. Said he wants to talk to you.”

  “Dr. Caleb?” the officer asked Thinnes.

  “The citizen who put us onto the Williams thing,” Thinnes said.

  The sergeant nodded. “Check with me when you’re ready to go.”

  Crowne waited until he was out of earshot before he said, “You left out the good part—about Caleb being your prime suspect in the Finley case.”

  Thinnes shrugged, picking up the phone. “Finley killed himself, remember? The ME said so.”

  He had just hung up when Caleb arrived. The doctor said, “May I speak with you privately?”

  Thinnes nodded and looked for an empty interview room. They all seemed to be in use. He walked over to tap on Karsch’s door. Caleb followed.

  “Could I borrow your office?” Thinnes asked Karsch when he opened the door.

  Karsch glanced at Caleb. “Surely,” he said, and went back inside to get his coffee cup.

  Thinnes stepped back to let Karsch pass and then ushered Caleb in, offering him one of the chairs at the end of the room opposite Karsch’s desk. They both sat. Thinnes noticed Caleb gave the room a quick once over, fixing on the posters. For the first time, Thinnes noticed they were actually poster-size photos of downtown buildings, not the usual landmarks, just artistic shots of ordinary real estate, signed J.K.

  Thinnes said, “What can I do for you, Doctor?”

  “Someone was in my apartment while I was out last night.”

  “Not a burglar, or you’d have called the police.” Caleb nodded. Thinnes said, “Go on.”

  “One or both of my cats always greets me at the door when I come in. Last night, it took me ten minutes to find them.” He paused for a second. “They only behave that way when strangers have been in the apartment.”

  “That’s all? Nothing out of place? Nothing broken?”

  Caleb shook his head. “I didn’t think anything of it last night. I thought perhaps they’d been fighting and were out of sorts.”

  “So what made you change your mind?”

  “How confidential is your investigation?”

  Thinnes looked at him speculatively. “Now we’re finally getting to the point, aren’t we?” Caleb squirmed, and Thinnes shrugged. “If I find out things that aren’t pertinent to the case and aren’t outright illegal, I keep ’em to myself. That what you mean?”

  Caleb nodded, fishing a note from his pocket. “I’m afraid I got fingerprints all over it before I realized…” He handed it to Thinnes.

  The note said, STOP POKING INTO FINLEY’S AFFAIRS OR YOUR PRIVATE LIFE WILL BECOME VERY PUBLIC.

  Blackmail, Thinnes thought. There’s a nice motive. He had a cop’s contempt for the subject and didn’t keep it from his voice as he said, “What’s this about? Some little indiscretion with an underage girl maybe?”

  Caleb seemed amused. “Hardly that.”

  “Or maybe an affair with a client? Strictly therapeutic, of course.”

  Caleb still wasn’t offended. “My guess is that someone’s about twenty years behind what’s going on with the gay community.”

  A little shock of disappointment jolted Thinnes, and something settled in his gut region like two pounds of lunch meat or like the stone he’d swallowed when he discovered his first detective partner was on the take. You couldn’t tell anymore—maybe that accounted for the hostility you felt in spite of yourself. It was too scary when you couldn’t tell. As fast as the feeling gripped him, he quashed it.

  Caleb met his gaze without apology or defiance, and Thinnes knew the doctor had anticipated and understood his reaction. Another shock stabbed through him as he realized how far out in front of him the shrink was on this. And on what else? He was not used to being outguessed.

  He said, “So?”

  “I believe there are only two ways to deal with a blackmailer,” Caleb said. “And I’m not about to shoot him.”

  “So why are you telling me?”

  “Because when our murderer finds he can’t scare me off, he may try to make it appear that I killed Allan because he was blackmailing me.”

  “Unless you did kill Finley, and this little blackmail threat is a red herring.”

  “Why? Why would I kill him?”

  “Maybe because he knew about you. It wouldn’t help your practice to have it known you’re queer.”

  “Really, Detective, this is the nineties. And I prefer to think of us as sexually left-handed—wired a little differently, but otherwise functionally human.” He paused; Thinnes didn’t comment.

  “It’s not a motive for murder these days,” he continued. “And if I had killed him, I could think of better red herrings.”

  Twenty-Eight

  Caleb managed to put his interview with Thinnes out of mind by the time he arrived at Spaulding House. Things there were unsettled. Rafe had been out of sorts all day—because of Donald, Caleb surmised. Rafe was prepared to have Donald die but not to have him suspended interminably on machines that couldn’t mend him. Donald’s family wasn’t ready to let go. Caleb had had to ask Rafe to leave the hospital to stop him from smashing the machines.

  “Goin’ to Lou’s to get drunk, Jack,” Rafe said. “Send someone to get me when it’s time.”

  He meant when Donald was finally gone.

  Caleb set to work loading the dishwasher with Paul, gently probing the fears that kept Paul from living out his life.

  Brian stuck his head into the room. “Lady to see you, Jack.” He made it sound like a smirk.

  Caleb dried his hands and went to see whom he was talking about.

  The scene in the front room could have been comedic. A woman stood in the center of the room watching Bill and Lenny scramble about, straining to make polite conversation and set her at ease while they unobtrusively straightened up. She seemed bewildered—as if she’d like to call time out but didn’t know the vocabulary. Caleb’s entrance was like a signal from the ref.

  The woman was Donald’s mother. She greeted Caleb with relief, and when he made introductions—Brian hadn’t offered; Bill and Lenny were too flustered, too embarrassed by the condition of the living room to think of it—she solemnly offered her hand to each of them.

  As if
the appearance of a mother—anyone’s—was a mandate to behave, Brian was suddenly attentive.

  “I came to tell you, Dr. Caleb,” she said, then, looking around, added, “to tell all of you: Donald died an hour ago. I can’t say it’s a blessing. It’s a relief.”

  After the commonplace ritual of the handshake, the announcement had a silencing effect.

  “You’ve been more a family to him, these past months, than his blood kin. You have a right to know.”

  What sort of mother was she? Caleb wondered. No Medea. No Mary of Nazareth either, though the Pieta—stone cold—might have been an apt comparison. She was so strangely formal. Someone who’d lived through so much, she hadn’t an emotion left to show. Someone who’d reached across the chasm of estrangement too late, perhaps discovered that the rules she’d lived by never had applied—who thought up these outrageous precepts anyway?—and she was too old to easily learn new ones.

  The younger men seemed too stunned by her presence and her announcement to act or speak or even register the content of her news.

  Caleb asked, “Can we get you anything? Coffee? Or something stronger?”

  She gave a small, sad smile. “No, thank you. I have a cab waiting. I just came by to tell you. And to see where he lived.” She looked around the room and at each of their faces, then turned and went to the door before any of them could get there to open it for her. She said, “The wake will be Thursday.” She didn’t say goodbye.

  It was Brian who said, “I’ll go get Rafe.”

  Twenty-Nine

  Lincoln Park Zoo. A familiar local reporter was taping her newscast with her minicam crew in front of the old lion house when Thinnes arrived. “We’re here at the Lincoln Park Zoo where the Friends of the Zoo are holding a gala benefit to help fund major capital improvements…”

  Thinnes merged with the crowd entering the building, which was packed with people dressed to the nines, drinking champagne and sampling the hors d’oeuvres being passed around. Tables had been set for dinner. A small orchestra played, and a few couples were dancing. Among the guests, Thinnes could see Vincent Margolis bending the ear of an unhappy Marshall Close. He spotted Lieutenant Evanger in a huddle with some of the top brass, including the superintendent and a couple of the in-house shrinks, Karsch among them. In fact, everybody who was anyone in Chicago was probably there. Rumor had it that the mayor himself would put in an appearance later, at what was billed as a nonpartisan, non-political event.

  Dr. Caleb was sipping champagne, studying the snow leopards. As Thinnes watched, an attractive woman in her fifties went up and slipped a hand under his arm. Caleb was obviously startled, but pleased. Thinnes worked his way close enough to hear Caleb tell the woman, “As far as I can tell, cocktail parties attract the greatest assemblages of canines outside the city pound. And anyone who doesn’t telegraph his every thought to them makes them very uncomfortable.”

  The woman laughed. “Your infamous cat-people, dog-people theory. You ought to write it up.”

  “I may.” He seemed to sober and get to the real point. “I was with the police Monday night, when they found a woman who’d been beaten to death.”

  “Ah.”

  “They got the man who killed her.” Caleb seemed to squirm. “He killed her in front of her five-year-old son. I still can’t understand…” He shook his head slowly, then seemed to dismiss the thought as he noticed Thinnes.

  “Margaret, may I introduce John Thinnes? John, Dr. Margaret Linsey, a colleague.”

  “How do you do?” she said. “Jack and I were just discussing motivation.”

  Thinnes nodded and offered her his hand.

  “You mean like Freud’s theory that everything’s motivated by sex?”

  “Freud was close,” Caleb said mildly.

  Thinnes found the conversation suddenly fascinating.

  “Power’s the primary drive, not sex,” Caleb added.

  “Really?” Thinnes said.

  “It’s true. Look around.” Caleb gestured with his glass. “All of them trying to get or consolidate or exercise power.” He looked pointedly at Vincent Margolis. “Or deprive someone of it.”

  Suddenly, Anita Margolis appeared at Caleb’s elbow, holding a glass of champagne. Her simple black floor-length dress showed off a stunning figure and diamonds—at her wrist and throat and earlobes. Her hair was piled up in glossy curls—she was incredibly beautiful, a woman for whom superlatives had been invented.

  “You must be talking about Vincent,” she said.

  Caleb smiled at her and nodded. “Do you know Dr. Linsey?”

  “Margaret. Please.”

  Anita offered Margaret her hand. “How do you do, Margaret?”

  Caleb indicated Thinnes as they shook hands, and Thinnes could hear the gentle irony as he said, “And you know Mr. Thinnes?”

  Anita smiled mischievously, offering Thinnes her hand. “We’ve met. John, isn’t it?” Thinnes nodded and shook hands. “I wouldn’t have thought this was your sort of party, John.”

  “I’m just here on business.”

  Caleb raised an eyebrow.

  “Nothing concerning our mutual acquaintance,” Thinnes told him. He said to Anita, “You were saying about Vincent?”

  She laughed. “Power is Vincent’s raison d’être. I quote: ‘I may be more powerful than God, because God is compelled to behave well.’”

  Thinnes found himself exchanging glances with Caleb, who appeared amused.

  “I rest my case,” Caleb said.

  Anita waited to be let in on the conversation and, when no one volunteered anything, said, “Is one of you gentlemen going to ask me to dance?”

  “Would you like to dance?” Caleb asked her—to Thinnes’s surprise. Caleb took her glass and put it with his own on the tray of a passing waiter, then led her to the dance floor. Thinnes watched with great interest.

  As they danced, Anita asked Caleb, “Having a good time?”

  “Mm-hm.”

  “But I’ll bet you’d rather be dancing with Detective Thinnes.”

  Caleb smiled. “Not here.”

  Anita giggled, looking over his shoulder at Thinnes. “He is sexy, isn’t he?”

  “And straight as laser light.”

  “Light bends, doesn’t it?”

  “Only around black holes.”

  She put her face against his chest and said, sadly, “Life’s so unfair sometimes.” Caleb smiled and held her close. She looked at Thinnes again. “He looks confused.”

  “Because he still thinks ‘homosexual’ is synonymous with ‘misogynous.’”

  “You told him?”

  “Mm-hm.”

  “I suppose he’s married.”

  “Probably. Anyway, he’s not your type either.”

  “Oh?”

  “Too obsessive. They say he never gives up on a case.”

  “Sort of like you?”

  Thirty

  It was quite late when Caleb drove the Jaguar into his deserted parking garage. His usual space was occupied, and he drove around looking for another, finally parking some distance from the door. As he walked toward the exit, his footsteps echoed like the sound track in a suspense film. He stopped to look around and listen.

  He had almost reached the elevator, sighing with a relief that made him feel sheepish, when two men rose from behind a parked car and blocked his path. Their faces were distorted by the stockings pulled over their heads, their hands hidden by gloves. As Caleb looked sideways for an escape route, they advanced. He feinted and dodged, but there was no room to maneuver in the narrow lane between the parked cars. One of them lunged at his head, the other went for his legs, from behind, with the battering-ram efficiency of a pro tackle. Caleb found himself hitting the pavement, with a small stab of shock that he didn’t feel pain.

  One of the attackers straddled his back, wrenched his arm behind him and grabbed his hair, jerking his head back, while the other slapped a cloth over his nose and mouth and held it there. A sweet, fam
iliar odor shot a warning through his brain, and he tried to hold his breath. He tried to get his knees under him, to lever the man off his back, but he was no match for two. His chest felt as if it was imploding. When the man holding his arm bounced his full weight on Caleb’s spine, he couldn’t avoid gasping through the cloth. How very unfair, was his last thought.

  Caleb lay face down on his own couch, semicomatose. The single lamp on the end table cast a soft cone of light over the end of the couch, onto the floor beneath it, and on the table itself, spotlighting one untouched line of white powder and the remains of another on the polished wood. The telephone on the other side of the lamp might as well have been in Indiana.

  B. F. Skinner strolled into the room and stood on hind legs to rub his face against Caleb’s. He jumped onto Caleb’s back and sat there, watching the door to the hall. He started to growl. Suddenly a small black comet streaked across the intervening space as Freud leapt onto the other end of the couch. The growls heightened into screams. Freud jumped Skinner, and suddenly a loud fight was in progress on top of Caleb. Clawing and spitting, the cats fell to the floor.

  The noise roused him to near wakefulness. He looked at the coffee table without comprehension, but alarm stirred on some deep level, and he groped for the phone. He managed to knock it to the floor before he passed out again. The cats screamed as the fight continued. Caleb’s eyes opened and slowly focused on the phone. He reached for it and tried to punch in 911, struggling to remain conscious. He passed out after pressing the second 1.